------=:::::: r ð O <.;? " 'DO :Sr ....-1 è5ð BOC 'r P AR.ts PARIS, JAN. 23 X a frightening figure, the Saar plebiscite has now shrunk to mere statistics, of the kind ev- eryone really expected to see. Paris radio fans were harder worked during the campaign than anyone else who could do nothing about the status quo. For the propa- ganda over the French radio was constant-and usually , anti-French. Radio is an af- ter-the-war growth.; the Saar pIe biscite was the most dan- gerous post-war European event. In settling it, messages in the air were used as a new belligerent tech- nique the way missiles from airplanes were first used over two decades ago, and constituted a similar fundamental innovation. The German heckling against France that came into France over the air from Hamburg, Stuttgart, and especially from the Frankfort sta- tion, broadcasting in German, Italian, and Spanish, was something to listen to. While Paris had been informed that the polling results would not be broad- cast on the night of J an uary 14th, the fatal day of the vote-counting, thou- sands of radio fans hopefully plugged in to learn who'd won, and heard that Marcel Thil, French light-heavyweight champion, was beating the tar out of the British challenger, Jock McAvoy, at the Paris Palais des Sports before a crowd of twenty-one thousand, which made pretty good substitute squabble news. The next morning, all of Eu- rope was up early. The League of Nations opened its doors at the ex- ceptional hour of six; the radio an- nouncers at the big Luxembourg sta- tion were dressed and at the micro- phone by seven; at seven-thirty, the announcement of the Hitler victory came through, a half-hour before the breakfast newspapers with the first headlines. All that night, the British Broadcasting Corporation hookups with Saarbrücken street noises were avail- able: the screams and singing of hap- py Germans, snake-dancing, hanging the anti-Hitler party in effigy from gib- bets (or so they shouted gaily through the microphone), merrymaking of vari- ous sorts calculated to make the Saar question seem a pretty good thing to have settled peacefully, at a distance and at any price. T HOUGH France's prestige suf- fered at having the status-quo vote so slim, had it been larger, her Minister LeTTeR. of Labor would have suffered still more. Hastening even a mere fifty thousand anti-Hitler voters to new homes and jobs in safe southern France is about all he can manage with French unemployment rising at the rate of twenty thousand a week. Outside the Saar, and despite it, France's European prestige is higher than it has been for years. For France has recently shown a new humble help- fulness in three directions- in the direction of Russia, whom she helped boost into the League; of Italy, with the recent Laval-Mussolini pact; and of Roose- velt (since Prime Minister Flandin's 1935 program is nearly NRA, with control of production, limitation of working hours, crop restrictions, with- holding of stocks from the market, rationalization of industry, the issue of loans, and a lot of things the French don't know the half of yet). In other words, instead of continuing to fight Lenin as an embalmed monster, II Duce as a murderous maniac, and F.D.R. as a provincial loony, as was her habit, la belle old France has finally made up her mind that, dead or alive, they are the coming attractive bright young men. France has been the die- hard of Europe in her denunciation of Communism, Fascism, and the New Deal; as though she patented modern revolution in 1789, she has since con- stantly warned everybody to accept no substitutes. In admitting the substitutes, she has finally admitted the twentieth century-in the thirty-fifth year of its reIgn. P RIME Minister Flandin's Cabinet, from which everybody expected nothing (and has had it, so far), has shared in the general national strength- ening. He accepted office with the state- ment that the country was on its last parliamentary legs; i.e., ready to tumble into dissolution. Since then, nothing's fallen but the price of bread, which he lowered at the wheat-growing peasants' expense; as for dissolution, he has threatened only to dissolve the patriotic leagues by confiscating all the ex-army officers' guns, which would dissolve nothing but what little good feeling still exists between the veterans and the government. As for money, he has tenderly stated that he is "firmly at- tached to the stability of the franc;" he has pushed C1ément Moret out of the Banque de France for being even 37 Cj( 'Æ' 65th FLOOR 4f :: J:; $... ' . , ': . :..: .;.'. ,." ....:.. ..:: :.. t ";':':-'". :;: ;:; .J. ,;j f\ ,; -: :-:.. .::/': : :; ::,..>i"" :$. :\ tL :: .:. ", '\%;!f::. :';: :')th:'; ;h'f;- :t ":)" ' w.,i '::' .....',' :'. . ":h.':-':. ::"::: \2.)\: J'; :::$' .: V"J- "::::;:: ;;::- ",: m' : I :+þ:: t '''':, ;:.:f:: :% "ð M l : : ::,*.:,:,,:. Beatrice LILLIE Jnternational Star Appears in the Rainbow Room at both dinner and supper shows. Dinner Show at 8:15 Supper Show at 12:15 JOLLY COBURN and his orchestra RICHARD LEIBERT at the organ LYDIA and JORESCO poets of the dance 6:30 TO 2 A. M. NIGHTLY INCLUDING SUNDAY . FOR RESERVATIONS PHONE CIRCLE 7-5312 TH E P A TI 0- ]nformal 65th FLOOR-WEST Cocktails from 4 P. M. Informal dining tin 12 P. M. ROCKEFELLER CENTER ROOF